


the phoenix of ba sing se

by heliantheae



Series: i think it's called my destiny that i am changing [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ba Sing Se, Fire, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28925772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliantheae/pseuds/heliantheae
Summary: Jianjun reflects on his new partner. Zuko gets a new nickname.
Series: i think it's called my destiny that i am changing [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108493
Comments: 28
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

Jianjun isn't sure what to make of his latest partner. His young, hot-tempered, firebending partner. It was difficult to reconcile his old enemies with the sixteen-year-old boy in front of him. 

The boy—Lee, although if that's his real name Jianjun will eat his boots—was quiet. Competent. Had likely been assigned to him by Yaochuan to keep them both from imploding. That was a nice thought, if useless in the face of their combined stubbornness.

Take right now, for example.

"You can't just walk into a burning building," Jianjun hisses, to which Lee shrugs and does just that.

Lee is more stubborn than he is, a fact that is both mortifying and impressive. 

The crowd watching the tenement burn protests as well, but no one tries to stop him. Given the look on his face, he can't blame them.

Jianjun begins mentally writing his letter of resignation. He'll have to resign and flee the city because the other option is staying and explaining to Mushi that he let his fool nephew kill himself. 

The boy returns with an unconscious woman over one shoulder and a wailing toddler wedged under his other arm. He deposits them both with Jianjun, then marches back into the building.

He does this several more times until Jianjun is surrounded by people in various states of consciousness. Finally, the boy emerges with an elderly man leaning on him and a pygmy puma held by the scruff of its neck well away from his body.

"Get them away from the building," he says, indicating the crowd. "At least as far back as we are."

"Why?"

"Because it's going to explode."

Jianjun herds the onlookers back and, very slowly, the building begins to crumble. As far as explosions go, it's not particularly spectacular. Given the pinched look of concentration on Lee's face, Jianjun thinks he knows why. 

The boy's actions don't stop there. The fire doesn't spread, burning within the perfectly rectangular area the walls had once marked.

In addition to that, he bends over the worst of the injured people he'd dragged out of the building, the ones Jianjun would have guessed wouldn't make it through the night and makes an odd motion in the air above their faces or burns.

Several of them cough themselves into consciousness. Others continue to sleep, albeit more peacefully than they had been. Even the pygmy puma gets attention, although it doesn't look very grateful for it.

"If I find out firebenders can heal—" he mutters, crouching next to his partner while he examines the first woman he had rescued.

"What?" says Lee. "No. I'm just taking some of the heat out. Eases pain. Prevents further damage. That sort of thing."

"Uh-huh," says Jianjun. "And all of you can do this?"

The boy shrugs. "It's not hard, but I don't think most people bother to learn. Firebenders don't really burn."

Jianjun eyes the scar taking up half of the boy's face. Clearly, he wants to say. Practically fireproof. 

Lee catches the look and rolls his eyes. "You have to work at it, to burn a firebender," he amends, and then he starts cooing at the still-wailing toddler as if that's not the worst thing Jianjun has heard in a while. 

The toddler's father appears then and throws himself at Lee to hug him. The boy seems baffled by the attention but pats the man's shoulder in what might seem comforting in the right light. "Your wife inhaled a lot of smoke," he says, interrupting the man's babbled gratitude. "I don't think the air burned her throat, but you should make sure she sees a healer."

"Yes, of course," says the man. "I won't forget what you've done. Ba Sing Se's very own phoenix." 

The man doesn't see, too busy waving down one of the medical professionals finally arriving over, but the look on Lee's face is somewhere between laughing and crying.

"You alright?" Jianjun asks in an undertone.

"The Phoenix of Ba Sing Se," Lee manages. "Oh, my father would die. Uncle can never know about this."

"Your uncle worries about you—" Jianjun begins, not excited by the prospect of keeping a secret from the short, rotund, _terrifying_ Mushi, but Lee interrupts.

"What? No. I mean, he does. But the phoenix thing. He'll laugh himself even sillier."

Jianjun takes a minute to consider the boy's uncle. He'd only met him once, after the riot several weeks ago. The man had poured whiskey-laced tea down his throat, let him sleep on the floor of his room, and generally been very friendly and personable in a way that made him suspect he was at least twice as dangerous as his nephew. 'Silly' was not a word he would use to describe the older man. 

They stand around until all of the injured people have been taken away by their families or carts, then a while longer while firefighters work to put the fire out. Eventually, they manage.

Well. Lee helps, Jianjun is pretty sure, because there's not a single live coal left when the chief firefighter does a walkthrough.

One of the younger firefighters makes some noise about that being odd, but the chief waves him off. "Sometimes we get lucky," he says. "Best not to question it. Thank you, boys," he adds to Jianjun and Lee. "I heard you got some folks out and backed the crowd up before it blew. That was brave of you." 

Lee blinks, seemingly surprised by the praise. "It was all Lee," Jianjun says and claps the boy on the shoulders. "Walked right in. I thought he was a goner."

The chief switches his focus to Lee. His eyes catch on the scar. "Takes extra guts when you've had a bad experience with fire before."

"House fire has nothing on an angry firebender," Lee mutters, gaze fixed firmly on the ground. 

"Ain't that the truth," says the chief. "Well, I'm gonna let you go. Make sure the kid gets checked out by a healer. Thanks for all your hard work tonight."

"Kid," echoes Lee in a sulky tone of voice that doesn't make him sound any older than he is, although the chief is out of earshot, so Jianjun can't lecture him.

"He's got a point. Let's get back to the station so I can return you to your uncle. Do you need to eat? I read somewhere that benders need to eat a lot."

Not, of course, that Jianjun has been reading up on benders now that he knows his partner is one. 

"Not a word about the phoenix thing," Lee says, but then he's too distracted by his stomach growling to threaten, bribe, or cajole Jianjun into silence. "Yeah, I could eat."

"Knowing your uncle, he's already heard," Jianjun says peaceably. "Come on. The food stand on ninth is still open this time of night."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome to the second installment, working title "alta 4.2.2" due to autocorrect and my latest attempt at a file naming system.

Jianjun is sure that, at some point, he had been sixteen and convinced he was immortal. The army had stamped that out of him pretty quickly, but he's sure there had been a time when he was willing to do stupid things without thinking about the consequences.

"Your nephew is going to give me gray hair," he tells Mushi.

The older man smiles beatifically and lays a tile on the Pai Sho board that obliterates any hope Jianjun had of his strategy working. "It's likely," he agrees. "My son, I blame for my gray hair. Lee, I blame for the balding."

Mushi's forehead is very shiny, and it extends all the way back until it's in line with his ears. "I just," Jianjun pauses. "Why?"

"The fire? The pygmy puma? The prostitutes?"

"...I didn't know you knew about the prostitutes."

"I know everything," Mushi says. "Or at least, Lee thinks I think I do."

"They're really quite nice young ladies when you get to know them," Jianjun says a little desperately. "And I don't think anything, um, untoward is going on."

Mushi nods. "Biyu comes over for tea sometimes," he says. "I'm not sure if she has taken a shine to my poor nephew or is merely baffled by him. Either way, she is very polite and surprisingly knowledgeable about different porcelain patterns."

"Right," Jianjun says for lack of anything better. "Of course."

"I win in three moves."

Jianjun studies the board. "Damn."

"Again?" Mushi asks.

"Aren't you tired of beating me?"

"I'm never tired of winning."

"Alright," says Jianjun. "I just. I know I got into trouble sometimes when I was that age. There's not much else to do when you're on leave. I don't remember quite that much trouble, though. A bar fight, sure, but…"

"I was in the army at that age too," Mushi says, restacking the tiles. "I remember quite a bit of trouble, and I'm sure there's more than time and alcohol have taken from me. Lee is particularly unlucky, though, it seems."

"Our station boss is at a loss as to what to do with him. Us, I suppose, but I'm really just along for the ride. He's taken to throwing us at cold cases when we're not on loan to the Lower Ring's fire service as a good luck charm, and Lee solves them. There's usually a knife fight involved. Or crossbows. I hate crossbows. I spent enough time getting shot at on the Wall."

"Ah, yes," says Mushi. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, "Lee did mention that you know he's a firebender."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jianjun says, starting to sweat. Mushi, for all that he only came up to Jianjun's chin, was intimidating.

"Keep it that way," Mushi tells him mildly. "I would hate for something to happen to you. Lee is rather fond of you, and it would upset him."

It would not upset Mushi at all, is what Jianjun gets from that. Even if the older man was what happened to him. "I did, um, have a question. If you don't mind," Jianjun hazards.

"Oh?"

"His scar. He said at the tenement fire that firebenders were hard to burn."

Mushi nods. "Which you saw for yourself when he walked into a burning building and then out again unharmed. Minus a few scratches."

They both paused to look at where Duck, the stray pygmy puma Lee had rescued from the building, was drowsing in the sun. She looked for all the world like a completely innocent, harmless creature. She was, Jianjun was partially convinced, a malevolent spirit in feline form. Lee adored her.

"But it's clearly a burn scar," he says. "I was on the Wall. I know what a burn looks like."

Mushi nods again. "It is."

"What happened?"

"My brother has a temper," Mushi says. "Several years ago, he took offense to something Lee said."

“And he did _that_?” Jianjun asks, aghast. "Lee was a child."

"That matters little to my brother."

"The boy's mother—" Jianjun begins, but Mushi is already shaking his head.

"Gone several years before that. I was grieving my son, killed in the siege of this very city, and I wasn't present. Lee is reluctant to share any details from that time. I can only speculate as to what might have happened."

"Nothing good," Jianjun says.

"No, nothing good," Mushi agrees. "Speaking of trouble, though, I believe my nephew has arrived."

And so he had. The topic of their conversation—and frequent consternation—stomped through the door into the tiny apartment several moments later. He was trailed by the two orphans Mushi seemed to have acquired somehow. Biyu and Ruolan, two of Lee's friends who also happened to be prostitutes, brought up the rear. Neither Jianjun nor Mushi knew where he'd met them, but they, along with several others, spent every waking moment together that they could.

"Ruolan is going to pierce my ears!" says the orphan called Smellerbee. "We have ice and a potato and a needle!"

"That sounds very exciting," Mushi says. "What, might I ask, is the purpose of the potato?"

"You put it behind the ear lobe before you stab," Ruolan explains. She's dressed for work, which means cotton so thin it's nearly transparent and heavy, dramatic make-up. "Keeps you from accidentally stabbing too far and helps support the ear, so it doesn't stretch. We can still eat it after."

"Sweet," says Smellerbee, clearly thrilled. "Dinner and an earring. Today has been great."

The look on Mushi's face said quite clearly that he would rather not eat the potato, and Jianjun wonders, not for the first time, who he'd been before Ba Sing Se. Fire Nation, obviously. His nephew was a firebender, and so was his brother if the story about Lee's scar was true. Jianjun hoped it wasn't, but he suspected it was. Well off, perhaps, although it was difficult to say. He certainly had expensive taste in tea and an extravagantly extensive Pai Sho tile collection, but everyone was entitled to their vices.

Mushi's son had been a soldier. Killed in the siege. Normally when Jianjun considers the siege, he's wracked with guilt. He'd been discharged mere months before it began, and it still haunts him when he's too keyed up to sleep. Could he have saved lives if he'd still been on the Wall? Would it have made a difference? Probably not. Probably he'd have died, just the same as everyone else. But, what if—

What if. Two words that would never leave him alone.

Now, for the first time, he's glad he hadn't been there. He knows definitively that he hadn't had a hand in Mushi's son's death, and that's a relief. Nameless, faceless soldiers are one thing. The son of a friend is another matter entirely.

"Okay?" Lee murmurs and Jianjun curses himself.

The boy is uncannily perceptive. "Lost in my thoughts," he says. "I'm okay."

Lee nods, satisfied with his answer, and then he goes to sprawl in the sun by Duck. Biyu trails after him, keeping a wary distance from the pygmy puma's claws. Mushi is right. Biyu either likes the boy, or she's not sure what to do with him. For the life of him, Jianjun can't begin to guess which.

"I win again," says Mushi.

Jianjun looks back down at the board. "How?" he asks despairingly.

"He cheats," says Lee from the floor, not bothering to open his eyes.

"Nephew, you wound me—"

"Empty your sleeves, then."

"I would rather not," Mushi says primly. "And anyway, if I cheated, Biyu would never beat me."

"Biyu cheats worse than you do."

"I do not," says the girl.

"I watched you take a tile out of Uncle's pocket and play it just yesterday," says Lee.

"I knew that looked familiar!" says Mushi.

"Never gamble with either of them," Lee advises. Duck stands, stretches, and transfers her physical form to the boy's chest. He pats her. "They'll clean you out."

Jianjun resolves to keep that in mind. The orphan called Longshot, though mostly silent, gives him a sympathetic look. Jianjun appreciates the support.


End file.
